Economy class syndrome
One hundred years will have passed in 2003 since Wright brothers succeeded in the first flight of their self-made engine airplane. Thanks to the brothers’ struggles for human dreams to fly in the air, the technological progress of air transportation systems has been made drastically. And with the help of a lot of industrial efforts afterward, traveling by airplane has become pretty popular today. You must take airplanes of course when you are coming to Japan.
The people a hundred years ago would be surprised if they saw jet engine airplanes. They might wonder how the lump of iron flies in the air. At the same time, would be worried about the safety. The airplane today, however , is regarded as one of the safest transportation systems.
Although this may be true, once an accident occurs, the loss will be huge. All the passengers in a plane can die of only one accident owing to its speed and altitude during flight. And you can also presume that hijacking or injuries by air turbulence occur. But, these risks are out of our hand. So what kind of risk management you can do? Since airplanes are indispensable, you can not take airplane in today’s globalization because it may be risky. Probably you can only choose airplane companies that seem to be safer by some kinds of safety index, despite there remain difficulties to judge.
Even though you can land in Japan without any happenings, another risk may be waiting for you. It’s so called economy class symptom which brings about breathing difficulties by the interruption in the blood circulation resulted from long flight. If you don’t move your legs in a narrow seat of economy class for a long time, there appear blood clots in leg’s veins. Through blood vessels the clots enter lungs and block the lung vessels. As a result, you may suffer from difficulties in breathing because oxygen does not come into lungs. You die when the worst comes to the worst. Of course if you sit long in seats of buses or cars, you might be exposed to the risk.
The people who easier to get the risk
are women, over fifty, obese, sitting for over five hours, etc.
Risk management